Wide format printing systems are adapted for printing images on large scale print media, such as for museum displays, billboards, sails, bus boards, banners, point of purchase displays and other similar print media. Some wide format print systems use drop on demand ink jet printing. In such systems, a piezoelectric vibrator applies pressure to an ink reservoir of a print head to force ink through nozzles positioned on the underside of the print head. A conventional wide format inkjet printer includes a print carriage that has a set of print heads arranged in a row along a single axis. As the carriage scans back and forth along the direction of the print head axis, the print heads deposit ink drops across the width of the substrate. An image is created by controlling the order at which the ink drops are ejected from the various inkjet nozzles.
In recent years, demand has grown for wide format printers that print at very high resolution (e.g., 600 dots per inch and higher). The print resolution of a conventional scanning wide format printer may be controlled by altering the lay-down method (or interlacing) of the dots being applied to the media by the print head carriage. That is, to achieve higher resolution, the carriage may pass over a particular area more times to allow the print heads to deposit more ink dots per unit length. Thus, increases in the print resolution of a conventional wide format printer have typically come at the expense of print speed.
An alternative wide format inkjet printer includes an array of inkjet print heads arranged along a single axis in a row that spans the entire width of the print media. Because such printers eliminate the need to scan a carriage across the width of the print media, such “full width” inkjet printers potentially could achieve high resolution without sacrificing print speed. However, conventional full width inkjet printers have gaps between adjacent print heads. Thus, although each print head may print at a specific resolution (referred to as the “native resolution”), as result of the intra-print head gaps, the media must be moved under the print heads additional times to fill in the print area associated with these gaps.
One technique to solve this problem would be to design a custom inkjet print head that spans the entire width of the print media, and that has a continuous resolution across the entire width of the print media. The problem with such a solution is that it is extremely costly to develop and manufacture such a custom inkjet print head, which would not benefit from the economies of scale that may be achieved by conventional inkjet print heads that are manufactured in high volume.
Another previously known full width wide format printer uses arrays of silicon ink chips that span the entire width of the print media. Although such printers achieve a continuous resolution across the entire width of the print media, ink chips are much more fragile than conventional piezoelectric print heads. As a result, such full width ink chip printers are more costly and less reliable than conventional inkjet printers, and suffer from frequent down time for repairs.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide full width, wide format inkjet printers that use conventional piezoelectric inkjet print head technology, and that provide a continuous resolution across the entire width of print media. It further would be desirable to provide full width, wide format inkjet printers that provide high resolution at high speed.